A British couple are awaiting the birth of two puppies cloned from their dead pet dog at a cost of around £67,000.

Laura Jacques and Richard Remde have flown to South Korea to a laboratory which offers the service over Christmas.

They first contacted the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, which has pioneered pet cloning after Miss Jacques’ boxer, Dylan died of a brain tumour in June.

Laura Jacques and Richard Remde have flown to South Korea to a laboratory that will clone their old dog Dylan (pictured) and are hoping to collect two new puppies this Christmas

Mr Remde, 42, who manages a building firm, and Miss Jacques said their cloned dogs would be like ‘five Christmases coming at once’.

Miss Jacques, a professional dog walker, told the Guardian: ‘I had had Dylan since he was a puppy. I mothered him so much, he was my baby, my child, my entire world.’

She heard about Sooam from a documentary on the first UK dog owner – Rebecca Smith of West London - who had her living pet dachshund Winnie cloned for free after winning a competition. She called the new pup ‘Mini-Winnie’.

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The couple, from Skipton, West Yorkshire, took the DNA samples from Dylan themselves.

But Mr Remde made two separate trips to the South Korean lab as the first batch of samples didn’t grow.

They were delighted when pregnancies were confirmed in two bitches using eggs carrying Dylan’s DNA.

Miss Jacques said she ‘couldn’t believe it’.

‘We were shocked and ecstatic, my legs turned to jelly. They said that the first puppy was due on Boxing Day and the second one a day later.’

Mr Remde added: ‘It will be like five Christmases coming all at once.’

To clone a dog, the lab implants DNA into a dog egg that has had its nucleus removed.

She heard about Sooam from a documentary on the first UK dog owner – Rebecca Smith (pictured) - who had her living pet dachshund Winnie cloned for free

The egg is given electric shocks to start cell division and it is then implanted into a surrogate bitch.

Because the dog will have the same DNA as Dylan, they will appear identical.

David Kim, a scientist at Sooam, said the birth of the two cloned dogs was novel for the laboratory as samples were taken from the dogs 12 days after he died.

He said it will ‘hopefully’ allow the lab to extend the time after death to take cells for cloning.

On the its website, the company advises that five days is the maximum time limit for taking cells.

The Sooam lab advises that by cloning a dog ‘we also heal the broken hearts’ of bereaved pet lovers and that it can clone any dog ‘no matter its age, size and breed’.

Dog owners whose pet has died are warned not to put their dead pet in the freezer – but wrap it in wet towels and put it in the fridge.

Around 700 dogs have been cloned by the lab to date.

While cloning humans in Europe is illegal, there is no law against cloning a pet. It is illegal, however, to clone an farm animal.

Woo-Suk Hwang, one of the main researchers at the Sooam lab, has attracted controversy in the past.

His claim in 2004 he had cloned a human embryo in a test tube was later retracted by the journal Science in 2006 after it found no evidence that the cloning took place.

The RSPCA does not approve of dog cloning.

A spokesperson said: ‘There are serious ethical and welfare concerns relating to the application of cloning technology to animals. Cloning animals requires procedures that cause pain and distress, with extremely high failure and mortality rates.

‘There is also a body of evidence that cloned animals frequently suffer physical ailments such as tumours, pneumonia and abnormal growth patterns.’

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Pet owners paid £67k to have puppies cloned at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation from their dead dog